Glitter - Abbi Glines Page 0,55

thankful for that. She’s gentle and sweet. Her spirit couldn’t have handled it if he had chosen to acknowledge her.”

There was a darkness in Miriam’s voice that warned me I didn’t want to know more. I wasn’t sure she meant to warn me, but it was there. A smart man would stop asking questions and lighten the mood. Wanting to get to know Miriam meant knowing all of her and this was obviously a very large part of who she was. A hate for a dead man began to burn in my gut and I felt helpless to do anything about it. How could I fix damage caused such as this? Knowing I needed to stop asking questions for the answers would only haunt me, I couldn’t seem to do as my head screamed I must.

“He didn’t ignore you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No,” she said as she stared off into the darkness. “He reminded me every day that I wasn’t the child who should have lived. I wasn’t the son he deserved. My life was a curse.” Her voice broke as she said the last word and I closed the space between us.

I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to my chest. She didn’t cling to me and cry the way I expected her to do. Women normally broke down that way. I had experienced it more than once. Instead, she simply let me hold her. There were no tears or dramatic sobs. Just the silence of the night surrounding us. The part inside me that had twisted into an ugly hatred of a dead man needed her to cry in my arms so that I could help mend her. Nothing I could do would heal her past, yet I needed to do something.

“He was wrong,” I told her. I might not know Miriam Bathurst well, but what I did know was she was a loving niece who accepted her aunt no matter her faults and she would do anything for her sister. Even give up her own chance at happiness. Those two attributes were why we were here this weekend. The man who had raised her knew nothing of her. He had lived a bitter life and died without knowing the beauty his oldest daughter was. It was his loss and one he so rightly deserved. Yet as I held her, I knew none of these things mattered for there was a little girl inside who had just wanted to be loved.

She pulled back from my embrace and looked up at me. Her eyes were damp with unshed tears and she smiled sadly. “I know that now. I didn’t for a very long time, but my father wasn’t a well man. His addictions were a sickness that attacked his mind and eventually his body. I know he never loved me, but I no longer need his love to feel loved.”

Miriam Bathurst was many things and the more layers I managed to peel back, the more true beauty I found. She hadn’t allowed her childhood to defeat her nor had she let it make her cruel or selfish. She had become strong because of it. She was loyal and she was exactly the kind of mother I wanted for Emma.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Miriam Bathurst

In the morning light, I was truly embarrassed by my emotional outburst last night in the garden. I had never shared my father’s disdain or perhaps hatred for me with anyone. Yet, somehow, in the safety net of the darkness, it had all come tumbling out. While Lord Ashington, had been truly wonderful about it all, I still felt ridiculous for sharing such intimate details of my life.

He had been the one asking me questions, but then I was usually very gifted at evading answers. Last night that gift had failed me as I had blurted out all the horrid details of my youth. When I had gone out to the gardens, I expected to be alone. His arrival had caught me unaware and perhaps I had been somewhat vulnerable.

Whatever the case, I should apologize to our host today. He did not invite us here so that he could counsel me on my troubled childhood. I watched as the lady’s maid, Gertrude, that had been assigned to me finished styling my hair in a loose gathering on my head with several loose curls, framing my face before standing up.

“Could you remind me where I am to be for breakfast?” I asked Gertrude.

She grinned and two